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UNIS Alumna and Tony Award Winner Sarah Jones Dazzles and Informs at Homecoming Performance

By UNIS Student Ruth T4 September 2014

Jones plays to a full house (Photo: Luca )

Dignified, pithy, and challengingly humorous is how one could describe UNIS Alumna and Tony Award winner Sarah Jones’s short one-woman, homecoming performance for an audience of T1s, T3s, other select students, staff, and faculty on Thursday, September 4th at the Sylvia Howard Fuhrman Center for the Performing Arts. Her performance brought together an ensemble of multi-dimensional caricatures loosely based upon the individuals she encountered during her time at UNIS, some of whom were in attendance. Jones moved fluidly between her cast of characters through the clever use of various scarves, hats, and jackets. She demonstrated her mastery of accents, inflections, and bodily minutiae, delighting the audience with her seemingly instantaneous transformations from elderly Jewish ‘Lorraine,’ to college hipster feminist ‘Bella,’ to veiled Jordanian ‘Habiba,’ amongst others.

Some of the characters were familiar (Photo: Luca)

Despite the comedy of her superb performance, each of her characters was a statement within itself. Rashid, an inner-city black man wearing a snapback hat atop a do-rag, casually informed us of the true message of Jones’s performance: “Just because someone doesn’t speak the same English as you, doesn’t mean you can’t learn something from them.” Indeed, Jones later explained that her intention was to humanize, rather than dehumanize, the media’s stock stereotypes. She urged us to respect the “dignity of the people who let [her] borrow their stories” and implored us through the character of a mesmerizing ‘house-less’ woman to acknowledge the man on the side of the street, for he is first and foremost a person.

Through the voice of Habiba, we are bluntly told to “remember that the people [who seem ignorant] are doing the best that they can; if they could be less ignorant, they would be.” In reality, Jones’s art is a form of activism that she uses to inform her audience of key issues, presenting them in a way through which they can be easily received: with laughter. According to Jones, “comedy and activism go hand in hand; behind an open, laughing mouth is probably an open heart or an open mind.” She uses her passion and her art to bridge the gap that she would otherwise find difficult to overcome.

Jones cites “the cultural petri-dish” that is UNIS, and her familiarity with the real individuals behind the stereotypes, as being the main inspirations for her one-woman show. Championed by megastar actress Meryl Streep, Sarah Jones’s Broadway show “Bridge and Tunnel” was a critical success, with the New York Times calling her “a master of the genre”. Acclaim also came in the form of a Special Tony Award for her efforts. Jones continues to inspire, inform, and amuse through her published TEDTalk, her post as UNICEF’s Official Spokesperson on Violence Against Children, and her current project, a commission from the Lincoln Center Theatre. Ms. Jones is truly an activist and an artist in every sense of those terms.

#Sarah Jones United Nations International School Alum #UnisNY #unis #UNISVerse